The surprise was not in the tone of the document: it had been widely tipped to be "devastating," and it was. The charges for the most part had also been well rehearsed. Nonetheless, when the House ethics committee at last released its report on Speaker Jim Wright, the findings of the ten-month investigation still qualified as a bombshell. Bad enough were the accumulated allegations of venality: details of Betty Wright's alleged no-show job, accounts of the Speaker's staff shamelessly peddling his book, the description of a wildly lucrative -- and suspicious -- oil-well deal that few had known about before. More...